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Ask the Librarian About a Book Cart Drill Team for Your Parade

Q. Our town is having “heritage days” with a parade scheduled.  We’d like to include a bookcart drill team.  How can we find one?

A. Typically (or rather I should say, in my local 4th of July Parade), the book cart drill team comes from the local public library.  I doubt that a drill team--even one of the "champions" would undertake a significant trip to be in a parade.  When the Bookcart Drill Team competition happens at the Annual Conference of the American Library Association, one of our vendors supplies a set of a dozen or so book trucks and all the teams use the same set--decked out differently, of course.  For images of the drill team performances at recent Annual Conferences, see http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=3D22BCD718780C1C

I would check with the larger public libraries in your area to see if they have--or would be willing to create--a bookcart drill team.  For parade purposes, the costuming is probably more important than the maneuvers, though the crowds do love the cross over patterns the drill team in my local parade does.  Or contact your state library association to see if there are already drill teams in your area.

For general background on book cart drill teams, you might want to consult the following book at your local library (or ask them to get a copy for you):
"The Library Book Cart Precision Drill Team Manual," by Linda D. McCracken and Lynne Zeiher, which was published by McFarland in 2002.  
 
There are clips of ALA's first competition, at the ALA Annual Conference in 2005, when it was covered as a news story for the library news cable-access TV show of Sarah Ann Long, the director of the North Suburban Library System in Illinois (and former ALA President). See the news story and video clips - which includes interviews with some of the participants - at the web site for the TV show, "What's New in Libraries?" at:
 
What's New in Libraries, http://www.whatsnewinlibraries.org
Episode {Book Cart Drill Teams: A Funny Idea}
http://www.whatsnewinlibraries.org/episode_76.aspx
RealPlayer Video Clip 1 - http://www.whatsnewinlibraries.org/media/76_1.rm
RealPlayer Video Clip 2 - http://www.whatsnewinlibraries.org/media/76_2.rm
Also see a RealPlayer Video Clip from an earlier episode -
Episode {viva La Library!} - http://www.whatsnewinlibraries.org/media/31_2.rm
 
And for more background—and a little history—see:
Drill cart teams take message to the streets
by Sarah Ann Long
July 11, 2005 - The Daily Herald


 

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